


Causeway

by gwa_fanfic



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky-centric, F/M, M/M, Numbness, not Avengers 2 compatible, post-CATWS, references to suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:39:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4690724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwa_fanfic/pseuds/gwa_fanfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bucky has decided it's best to rid this earth of himself, but first he has some other things to take care of. Like Hydra bases. And convincing Steve it's all for the best. Except Steve will never give up on his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Causeway

He goes to the Smithsonian every day right before closing time and stares at the pieces of the exhibition proclaiming him a hero. Fallen for his country. Someone to be honored.

When the voices in his head stop shouting, murmuring, crying, talking over one another frantically -- but never _to_ him-- and _let him read_ the words some curator wrote up to advertise James Buchanan Barnes’s war time heroics, he doesn’t feel anything.

One evening a small boy sneaks up on him -- don’t even ask him how -- and the movement in the lower corner of his eye makes him startle. He barely manages to keep his metal fist from thrusting out and wrapping around the boy’s neck.

He starts walking. Leaves, somehow. His chest tight. His breathing picking up, his skin crawling, his body shivering and his face sweating. He comes to in a blessedly empty wagon of the metro. The shuffling sounds of the train feel weirdly calming. He gets out at the next stop, steals a motorcycle, checks the tank and starts driving. He does that for as long as there’s gas. He almost drives off a cliff, accelerating the bike, considering to end it right there and then, but if a fall from thousands of metres couldn’t do the job, he doubts this canyon will grant him this.

He stops at a trucker motel somewhere nowhere and gives into the queasy feeling, orders a burger. It tastes like nothing. He breaks into one of the rooms and takes a shower. Then he lies down on the bed and stares at the ceiling for a couple of hours. Around two in the morning he slides his legs off the mattress and stands, heads to the room next to his. He rips the door off its hinges and beats some motherfucker off a boy with a black eye forming and a red welt around his neck.

He digs out the bastard’s wallet and counts the bills as the teenager stares at him, vulnerable, wide-eyed, almost naked and frozen on the spot.

“Don’t mention it,” he says gruffly although the boy is too shocked to say anything in return. He doesn’t care for gratitude anyway. He takes a hundred bucks and throws the rest of it, a couple of hundred and twenty dollar bills onto the bed where the boy has started moving, picking up his pants from the floor and eyeing him, swallowing dryly and trying his best to suppress the shivers wracking his body.

He leaves the room and heads over to where he parked the motorcycle. He starts pushing it over to the gas pump and watches the boy flee the room a couple of seconds later in the rear view mirror. He gets on the highway and it takes him back to Brooklyn. The steps up to his family’s old home are still the same and he sits down and keeps sitting there.

That’s where he lets Steve find him.

Steve looks worn around the edges but a lot better than the last time he saw him. It’s been only a couple of weeks. Must be the serum they injected him with. Steve’s voice is strong and gentle when he calls him “Buck.”

“Stevie,” he says and something lights up in Steve’s eyes. _Yes_ , he wants to snap. He remembers him now. How could he not after Steve almost got himself killed over wanting him to.

“Can I get you out of the rain?” Steve asks.

“You always got what you wanted,” he says and Steve replies, “Not always,” without hesitation. He has no comment. He gets up and heads towards the SUV Natalia is waiting in just around the corner. Steve’s chest starts heaving in panic before he realizes where he is heading. He hears Steve let out a long, slow breath and wonders how that feels. He hasn’t been able to in a while.

“James,” Natalia greets when he slides the door open. Her voice doesn’t betray any emotion.

“Ahoj krásko,” Barnes answers, tonelessly, as he meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. It doesn’t evoke any visible reaction from her. He doesn’t look away until Steve settles in the back next to him. He closes his eyes. They bring him to the Avengers tower because of course they do. The Nordic god and a tall blonde with a phone in one and a pad in another hand are his welcoming committee.

“Welcome, friend of Steve,” the god says.

“Sergeant Barnes,” the blonde says with a smile that would look reassuring to any other person but to him. He wasn’t raised in a barn, at least according to his own research, so he says “hello”. Tony Stark makes a big entrance. He really is the son of his father.

“So, you’ve killed my parents,” is what Stark leads with and he catches Steve wincing in the corner of his eye.

“Yeah,” he answers, because he did. They stare at each other.

“I’ve been made to do stuff,” Stark says after a while and the room visibly relaxes. He nods, because okay.

“How are you dealing with the brainwashing and whatever,” Stark asks with a wave of his hand. He turns around and starts pouring a glass of Bourbon. Putting his back towards him feels deliberate. He doesn’t answer, because he doesn’t know. Stark doesn’t wait for him to answer anyway. 

“JARVIS?” Stark calls.

“Yes, Mr. Stark?” an automated voice replies.

“We have a new house guest. Captain America’s BFF, in fact.”

“I am aware, Sir,” the voice replies. “Welcome, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Barnes is fine,” he tells the ceiling.

“Well enough, Barnes. If you would get into the elevator, I’ll bring you to your floor.”

“I’ll go with you,” Steve tells him, his hand halfway to his shoulder before he remembers himself. He eyes Steve’s hand for a second and then follows his instructions. It’s a tight fit between Steve and him already, but Natalia follows anyway. He didn’t expect anything else.

They settle him in and ask him if he’s hungry.  _Never_ , he wants to say. He shakes his head.

“If that changes, you only need to say so, Barnes,” JARVIS pipes up.

He nods.

“You get a fantastic steak here,” Natalia says in Russian. Steve glares at her. He suppresses a smirk.

He walks over to the glass wall and takes a look outside.

“So what’s the plan,” he asks after a while.

“There’s none,” Steve says. “Except to get you what you need.”

“I don’t need anything,” he says. He watches sparrows fly circles in front of the window. 

Eventually they leave him alone with JARVIS. He keeps watching the sparrows gliding through the air. A couple of days he spends in front of the windows. At night he doesn’t want to see the lights of the city, so he stares at the ceiling instead. It’s made of something plastic, unnatural. There is not one flaw in it he could concentrate on. Two weeks with daily visits from Steve later he asks JARVIS, “Am I free to leave?”

“You are,” JARVIS replies. “Though I am programmed to report your departure to Mr. Stark.”

“Thanks,” he says and gets into the elevator. It’s late, the sun sinking and he heads down to the Hudson. He sits on the bank and watches the water flow and tries to sort through all the voices in his head. It doesn’t work. When the sun begins to rise again he starts walking back. On the way he encounters a terrified woman being backed into a corner by three bulky guys. They soon lie scattered around on the floor and the woman keeps babbling and crying and saying “Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

“I’ll accompany you somewhere safe,” he says, gruff. So he does that. He brings her back to her hotel where the concierge takes on the flustered woman. He is gone before the woman can turn around and say “thank you” again. He goes back to his routine of bird watching and ceiling staring. He doesn’t say much. Steve doesn’t offer much either.

“I’d like you to meet a friend of mine,” Steve says one day.

“You made friends? Inform the press,” he deadpans.

“Shut up,” Steve says and smiles. Something stirs inside him at that but he doesn’t examine it.

“His name is Sam. He is a war veteran. Good guy. Finds himself mighty swell.”

“No one says “swell” anymore, Steve.”

“I do.”

So he meets Sam. He’s met him before. “We’ve met,” Sam says as he holds out his hand.

“I remember,” he answers, because he does.

“Good,” Sam says. “Steve tells me you like the birds. Way to buy into the grandpa thing, with the bird watching.”

“I like them just fine. Just not when they kick me off my feet.”

Sam’s grin widens at that.

“That was badass,” he says proudly. Steve rolls his eyes.

He goes back to watching the sparrows. Natalia lets herself in one night as he lies there staring at the ceiling.

“You need to get your shit together,” she hisses in Russian.

“Can you still do that thing, Natalia? With your thighs?”

“What? Strangle you?”

Natalia sits down on the bed. “Probably,” she says. She fits herself alongside his body, her head braced on his shoulder. “Get your shit together,” she says. “And we’ll see about it.”

For the first time in ages, it feels, he closes his eyes.

In the morning, Natalia is gone and there’s something below his ribcage that makes it hard to breathe. He spares “his shit” a thought and how he would be able to get it together. He can’t come up with an answer, so he goes outside and steals a car and gets out of Manhattan, New York, the state.

When he comes back, Stark intercepts him in the foyer. “Could you not make grandpa have a heart attack? We still need him.”

“Fine,” he says and heads for the elevator.

Stark squints his eyes at him. “Nice work on that Hydra base,” he says. “Let me look at your arm.”

“No.”

The doors close. The doors open. Steve’s eyes are angry.

“Don’t do that again! Jesus!”

“I was bored.”

“I could’ve come with you.”

“No.”

“Buck--”

“No.”

“You don’t-- Look, you’re not alone with this. We all want them-- Are you okay?”

He might be tilting a little to the side. He’s had worse. “Fine,” he snaps.

Steve eyes him. “Bucky, I don’t want to lose you again.” He wonders what that feels like, wanting.

“You will,” he says, because Steve will.

Steve’s eyes widen. “Don’t say that. Don’t fucking-- Look, I can’t go through that again. I need you.”

“What do you need from me? You don’t need me, Stevie. You might have once. But you’re fine without me. Stop wasting your time with this.”

“ _I’m not wasting my time_ ,” Steve shouts. It's the loudest he's gotten in weeks.

“We’ve reached it, okay? A long time ago.”

“We’ve reached what.”

“The end of the line, baby. It’s over, okay? Get that already.”

“You’re alive, Buck. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t just decide that crap.”

“Am I though?”

“What.” Steve frowns.

“I’m a ghost of what you called your best friend, Steve. You don’t have to put up with this. It’s time to let it go.”

“Buck, you need to trust me here, okay? You’re still here." Steve's eyes are frantic. "I can get you help. You’ll get help and you’ll feel better.” 

“Steve," he says. He sighs. "I’ve killed people. Good people. Women. _Children_. Do you get that?”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I pulled the trigger. I’ve sliced their necks. I’ve--” His voice breaks, then, and he doesn't know what to do with that. It feels inconvenient. Steve takes a step closer. His eyes look shiny and he remembers that it takes some doing to make Steve cry.

“You did what you did to survive.”

“I did what I did because they told me to.”

“You were their prisoner.”

“I am a murderer, Steve.”

“You are a good person, Buck.”

“You are ridiculous.”

“Please let me get you help. You’re not as unique as you think you are, you know? There are others out there, others that have gone through similar stuff.”

“You don’t know what I’ve been through, okay? You couldn’t even imagine--” He bites his lip. It doesn’t matter. “Look, I’ve had a lot of time to think. I was told again and again I am the fist of Hydra. Well, now I’m going to fist those motherfuckers and then, then I’ll put an end to this. You need to prepare for that.”

Steve stumbles back, a gasp escaping his lips. “What are you saying, Buck," he asks flatly.

“You need me to spell it out for ya?” he mocks.

“Don’t do this to me. I just got you back,” Steve whispers. He looks devastated. He doesn't like seeing the desperation on Steve's face.

“This is your ultimatum, Steve. Prepare.” He goes into the bedroom and closes the door. It takes a while, but Steve leaves.

Good.

“You are a shithead,” Natalia greets him later that night.

“I see you’ve talked to Steve.” Natalia cocks her eyebrow. “I gave him a heads up. He should thank me.” Natalia rolls her eyes. He wonders what that feels like, judging someone.

“How do you even wanna do it?”

He doesn’t ask what she means. “I don’t know, Natalia. I’ll find a way. I have time.”

“What’s your schedule?”

“Well, wiping out Hydra will take some time. Years, probably.”

“Take me with you.”

“Look at you. Wanna get rid of me so soon?” he smirks.

She rolls her eyes, but there's a fondness in them he doesn't know what to do with. “Why do men always have to be so egocentric? I got a score to settle, myself.”

“Fine,” he says.

So they plan. Steve keeps bringing by Sam. Sam starts bringing by Jaunette. Jaunette has got patience, but he’s outlasted worse things than that. Three months later Natalia and him set out to eradicate some Hydra bases in the South. They have some intel that Hydra’s still most active there. They leave in the middle of a sunny day. Hours later, when the moon is at its highest, Natasha’s phone rings. She drops it in the river. He glares at her. “What? I wanted to give him a fair chance of catching up with us.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s Steve.”

They kill two Hydra leaders and then they fuck. His eyes start leaking and Natalia wipes the tears away, shoves him over and starts riding him for real. He comes, but other than that, he doesn’t feel much. They kill another Hydra leader and _don’t_ kill a scared intern who doesn’t seem to know who he had been working for. Steve meets them at the sleazy joint they’ve been camping out in for the last week and glares at them. The three off them kick another two Hydra bases off the map. Then aliens attack, which seems to be a thing that has happened before, and Steve and Natasha are called back by the rest of the merry band of superheroes that call themselves the Avengers.

“You’re coming with. We may need you,” Steve decides and he thinks, _fair enough_ and goes with them.

He meets Hawkeye, who eyes him in a lackadaisical way. Dr. Banner, who doesn’t even hesitate thrusting out his arm for a handshake. Agent 13, who looks so much like her aunt he gets whiplash. Thor and Falcon, and Tony Stark, of course.

The aliens want to enslave humanity and that shit doesn’t roll with him, so he joins their fight. The battles go on for three days and at the end of it they’re battered and broken, but still standing. Apparently that is a theme with the Avengers. Stark throws a party, but everyone is too tired to do anything but sit there and drink. He takes the chance to sneak out and sets out for the base in Alaska. On the way there he stops at another base they had shut down the month before to get new gear and weapons.

Alaska is a bloodbath and it makes him feel… good. Whatever doubts he might have had, thoughts he may not be a bad person, may be the person Steve sees in him, vanish with it. He takes one of their aircrafts and pilots it towards Europe, where there’s more work for him to be done. Halfway over the Atlantic Steve’s voice rings over the on-board system. It’s announced by JARVIS, who politely tells him about the hack.

“When’s the last time you slept?” Steve asks, forever concerned.

“There was one night a couple of months ago,” he answers, because there’s no reason to lie.

“Buck--”

“I’m fine, Steve. These things basically fly themselves.”

“Tony told me where you are headed. We’ll meet you there.”

He sighs. “Tu’ was du nicht lassen kannst,” he replies and hears Natalia snort, then translate in the background.

“You know me. I’m stubborn.”

He smirks.

“Unfortunately,” he says and then cancels the connection. He takes a nap, as much as a guy with a screaming brain like his is able to, and when he wakes up the jet is still in the air. Steve and Natalia make good on their word and they bring along reinforcements.

“I got nothing better to do,” Hawkeye shrugs.

They shut down four Hydra bases all over Europe. At the fifth things don’t go according to plan and Steve gets hurt, badly. They bring him to a German hospital and call upon Stark’s connections. Sam flies in and hovers next to Steve’s bed and glares at him. Natalia got hurt as well and goes somewhere to lick her wounds, but shows up minutes after Steve’s breathing picks up and he wakes. He is the first one Steve’s eyes seek out in the room and he takes the opportunity to inform Steve and the rest of them that he is going to take care of the rest of the Hydra bases by himself.

They don’t let him.

At least Steve’s friends realize that Steve needs time to recover and somehow they manage to guilt him into flying back to the US alongside Sam. He is surprised Steve trusts Natalia with babysitting him alone, since Hawkeye sets off to go on another mission, but in the evening Thor joins them and that explains everything. Natalia sees it as an affront to her capabilities and he is sure Steve is going to pay for that at a later point in time. They kill another Hydra “leader” and shut down another base. Thor excuses himself after. He is needed elsewhere, Jane is calling.

Natalia and him use the opportunity to fuck again.

They have a run-in with Rumlow.

Rumlow looks mighty ugly with his skin scarred from burns, but he still likes to hear himself talk. For the first time since he pulled Steve out of the Potomac, he feels unsettled, freezing in place when Rumlow tries to use a command he used to respond to.

“What, you have a personality now?” Rumlow taunts him. “I liked you better pliable, on your knees.”

“I bet,” he replies, because he can see why.

Natalia shoots Rumlow from behind but Rumlow moves in the last second. The bullet finds his shoulder and the asshole somehow manages to knock him off his knees and flee.

“Really?” he asks when Natalia offers him a hand up.

“What?” she snaps. “ _I_ wasn’t the one just standing there.”

They finish off the last European Hydra bases and return to New York. Steve doesn’t let him out of his sight. “What’s next?” he asks one evening.

“There’s still two bases in the Middle East.”

“And then?”

He meets Steve’s eyes. It’s answer enough. Steve nods, defeated.

“Is there anything--” Steve’s voice cracks. “Anything I can do to change your mind?”

“I don’t think so, Stevie.”

“You sure, Buck?” Steve gathers his wit and walks over to him. He gets into his space. “I know what you’ve been doing,” Steve says.

“I mean, I’d be concerned if you hadn’t. You’ve been there most of the time.”

“Not the bases,” Steve says.

That confuses him. He hasn’t been doing anything else over the last couple of months.

“JARVIS?” Steve asks, still very much in his space. “Can you show us the file you’ve compiled?”

“Of course, Captain,” JARVIS replies smoothly. The screen behind Steve comes to life and there’s a picture of a male person. Pretty young, probably teenaged. Maybe in his early twenties. He looks familiar but he can’t really place him. A picture of a woman follows and he remembers that woman. She is the one he guided back to the hotel. The police report that is pulled up next reads her words. “A guy with longish, brown hair and. And a metal hand? Saved me. He saved me. I would’ve been. It’s. _He saved me!_ ”

He realizes what Steve is trying to do, then. He also remembers where he met the boy now. Pictures of a bunch of other people follow, all familiar to him. There are also some hospital records. A morgue file.

“You act like you don’t feel anything, like you don’t care. But you do, Buck.”

“I didn’t go out to play vigilante, Stevie. I just happened upon these things.” He sighs.

“And you helped.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“So you don’t fool me, Buck. You still got a heart in there, you know?” Steve points at his chest where his heart is beating faster than usual. “You saved the world with us. You saved those people. You’re making sure to rid the earth of these Hydra bastards.” He needs to look away at the hope in Steve’s words, but Steve doesn’t let him. He cradles his skull in his big palm and makes him meet his eyes. Steve’s eyes are dark and sparkle with determination. “Isn’t that worth it? To keep doing this? You can make lives better. You can make your own life better as well. You deserve it, Buck. Because I know, I _know_ , you’ll use it to keep doing this.”

“Steve.”

“Please,” Steve begs, his voice breaking. “We can do this. Together.”

He takes a step back, needing the room. Steve's hand falls away. 

“I’m hollow,” he says, final.

“I’ll do my best to fill you up, then,” Steve says, fiercely. Then he blushes, his cheeks and neck reddening. Bucky barks a laugh, then startles, because he hadn’t known. Hadn’t known he was still capable of doing that. Steve’s eyes widen comically and that sets Bucky off again, laughing. Steve joins in and they laugh together until tears spill over.

Bucky laughs so hard that he starts hyperventilating, and then Bucky cries. And cries. Sobs wrack his body. Steve holds him through it.

“Til the end of the line,” Steve whispers into his hairline and follows it up with the press of his lips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ahoj krásko (Czech) - “Hey, Beautiful!”  
> Tu’ was du nicht lassen kannst (German) - “Knock yourself out!”
> 
> If you feel this needs any kind of trigger warning, let me know.  
> If you find any mistakes, feel free to point them out to me.


End file.
